What natural resource is important in Canada's Atlantic economy?

Fisheries are central to Canada's Atlantic economy and a defining industry of Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick. The Atlantic fishing industry generated about $5 billion in landed value in 2023 and supports approximately 80,000 direct and indirect jobs. The Grand Banks off Newfoundland is one of the world's most productive fishing grounds, with cold currents from the Labrador Sea meeting the warmer Gulf Stream over a shallow continental shelf.

Lobster is now the most valuable Atlantic species by landed value, generating about $1.6 billion annually with major exports to the United States, Europe, and Asia. Snow crab from the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Newfoundland shelf, snow shrimp, scallops, herring, mackerel, and Atlantic salmon (mostly farmed) round out the catch. Major processors include Clearwater Seafoods (acquired by the Mi'kmaq Coalition and Premium Brands Holdings in 2021), High Liner Foods, and Cooke Inc., one of the world's largest seafood companies headquartered in Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick.

The collapse of the Atlantic cod fishery is the defining moment of Canadian fisheries history. Federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans John Crosbie announced a moratorium on the northern cod fishery on July 2, 1992, putting 30,000 Newfoundlanders out of work in a single day. The cod stocks have only partially recovered, with limited commercial fishing reopened in 2024. The moratorium prompted a federal package called The Atlantic Groundfish Strategy (TAGS) and accelerated the diversification toward shellfish.

Indigenous fisheries have grown since the Supreme Court of Canada's R. v. Marshall decisions of 1999, which affirmed Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, and Peskotomuhkati treaty rights to fish for a moderate livelihood. The 2020 Mi'kmaq lobster fishery in southwest Nova Scotia drew national attention to ongoing tensions over the scope of treaty rights, addressed by federal-Indigenous co-management agreements with the Listuguj, Sipekne'katik, and Esgenoôpetitj First Nations.